Quotation from Justice's Kennedy's opinion in
Obergefell v. Hodges:
No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the
highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.
In forming a marital union, two people become something greater
than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases
demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past
death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they
disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do
respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its
fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to
live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest
institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law.
The Constitution grants them that right.
Quotation from the Joint Opinion by Justices O'Connor, Kennedy and
Souter in Planned Parenthood v. Casey
These matters, involving the most intimate and
personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central
to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty
protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is
the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of
the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about
these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were
they formed under compulsion of the State.
These considerations begin our analysis of the woman's interest in
terminating her pregnancy, but cannot end it, for this reason:
though the abortion decision may originate within the zone of
conscience and belief, it is more than a philosophic exercise.
Abortion is a unique act. It is an act fraught with consequences
for others: for the woman who must live with the implications of
her decision; for the persons who perform and assist in the
procedure; for the spouse, family, and society which must confront
the knowledge that these procedures exist, procedures some deem
nothing short of an act of violence against innocent human life;
and, depending on one's beliefs, for the life or potential life
that is aborted. Though abortion is conduct, it does not follow
that the State is entitled to proscribe it in all instances. That
is because the liberty of the woman is at stake in a sense unique
to the human condition, and so, unique to the law. The mother who
carries a child to full term is subject to anxieties, to physical
constraints, to pain that only she must bear. That these
sacrifices have from the beginning of the human race been endured
by woman with a pride that ennobles her in the eyes of others and
gives to the infant a bond of love cannot alone be grounds for the
State to insist she make the sacrifice. Her suffering is too
intimate and personal for the State to insist, without more, upon
its own vision of the woman's role, however dominant that vision
has been in the course of our history and our culture. The destiny
of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own
conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society.